Gaming systems currently available on the market are capable of playing game discs, music CDs, and movie DVDs from a disc drive. For example, the Playstation® 2 gaming system from Sony Corporation provides the ability to play games, music, and video titles from a disc inserted in the console. These gaming systems have limited internal data storage capacity. Typically, the internal data storage is used to store system and configuration information, such as the local time, the language preference of the user, and other settings. Other data, such as saved game data and other game-specific data, is generally stored on a memory device that is external to the game console. For example, memory units that are inserted into a handheld game controller store game information for later retrieval by a game console. Existing gaming systems do not contain an internal non-removable hard disk drive for storing saved games and other information.
A new generation of video gaming systems are equipped with a hard disk drive to enhance gaming, and broadband connectivity to facilitate online gaming. With these additions, significant amounts of data (e.g., saved game data from multiple game titles and multiple users of the gaming system) can be stored within the video gaming system using the hard disk drive. This new internal storage capability creates new issues with respect to software or data corruption on the hard disk drive. Returning a video gaming system to the manufacturer to correct the software and/or data corruption is an inconvenience to the user who is unable to use the system for a significant period of time.
Accordingly, there is a need for a reset mechanism for gaming systems and other devices that allows a hard disk drive to be reset to a known state. Further, there is a need to avoid abuse of the reset mechanism. Such abuse could result in the deletion of many hours of saved game information, device configuration information, high scores, etc.